


Bug Out:  Part 1.  Peg

by justalittlegreen, PrairieDawn



Series: Welcome to 1951 [4]
Category: MASH (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Bad Weather, Because apparently that's my favorite antagonist, F/M, Flagg is an ass, Kid Fic, Minor Injuries, Period-Typical Homophobia, Road Trip, Robbery, very brief mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:56:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justalittlegreen/pseuds/justalittlegreen, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: When Peg Hunnicutt gets a frantic call from Radar O'Reilly telling her to make a sudden cross country trip to visit his mother in Ottumwa, she does what any reasonable person would do:  Packs the car and the baby and goes to Ottumwa.Peg Hunnicutt-centric.  Not a whole lot of Star Trek in this one.  Not a heck of a lot of MASH either.





	1. You have got to be kidding me!

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the_aleator, whose beta reading is thorough, thoughtful, and makes my writing so much better than it would be. And has contributed enough I decided she needed a writing credit.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peg gets a frighting call from one of BJ's buddies in Uijeongbu and has to decide what to do about it.

She almost missed the call. It was a nice day, cloudy but dry and not too cool, and she was just about to head out the door to walk Erin in her pram when the phone rang. 

She parked Erin in the living room, praying the discordant jangle of the phone wouldn’t set her off, and lunged for the receiver. There was a longish silence, a click, and then another, and the faint hiss of a distant connection. Could it be BJ? “Um, Hello, ma’am,” The voice was light and high, slightly nasal. Definitely not BJ. “Corporal O’Reilly from the 4077th.”

She swallowed. “Is it. Is it BJ?” she managed to choke out. “No, BJ’s fine, I just needed to talk to you,” the voice reassured. There was a pause, two or three seconds. “I need you to take Erin and go to my mom’s place in Ottumwa.”

“Are you joking?”

“No, it’s really important, you gotta go.”

“Who are you and why are you telling me this?” She could imagine one of BJ’s buddies, Hawkeye perhaps, setting up some kind of prank, but she couldn’t see the humor in calling her and telling her to make a cross country trek with a baby.

The voice continued. “O’Reilly. Radar O’Reilly.”

“O’Reilly. The company clerk. You sleep with a teddy bear.”

Radar’s voice took on a tinge of embarrassment. “Yeah, that Radar. Here’s the address.” He supplied it slowly. Repeated it three times. 

“But why?” she said.

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you why, just please. Go.” The please caught her attention like a loop of cat briar, sharp and tenacious. It had a desperate tone, almost as though this Radar O’Reilly were on the edge of tears. The connection broke.

Peg hung up the phone. A line from BJ’s most recent letter rose to mind.

Time to go, my love. Radar's just yelled 'Choppers!' and that means I'm in for a long night. I'll finish this letter on the other side.

She scooped Erin out of the pram, asleep, mercifully, and climbed the stairs in their narrow townhouse to their room, where the bed was not yet made. She reached under the bed for the box where she kept all of BJ's letters and stopped herself. Making the bed would give her a moment to get her thoughts in order to try to solve this puzzle she’d been presented.

She settled Erin into her cradle and gave the sheets and quilt a quick shake and a perfunctory smoothing to make a large surface on which she could spread out all the letters. She set the box in the middle of the bed, then took out each letter, unfolded it, and lay it on the bed, one next to another. He’d only been gone a few months, but the letters covered most of the bed, some several pages in his thank you note worthy hand, some half page scrawls on smudged paper.

Why would the--she leaned in to read a line in an early letter.

> _The company clerk - we call him Radar I guess because 'Walter' doesn't really fit a kid who looks young enough to sleep with a teddy bear--_

Why would the company clerk call her at, what time was it in Korea? Four in the morning or something. To insist she go to visit his mother in Ottumwa? Where was Ottumwa, anyway?

She pulled the address out of her pocket. It was written on her grocery list paper, torn off the light green quarter-size sheets she kept by the phone. “3515 Eddyville Rd., Ottumwa, Iowa.” Iowa. She scoured each letter for mentions of the clerk. From what she remembered, he was nineteen, but seemed much younger, intermittently brilliant, but clumsy and odd.

> _Radar's the one you want to protect from everything_

> _Hawkeye says Radar is like the son, kid brother, and dog he never had..._

> _Radar's family sent this video of themselves in the yard. Sweet family. He looks just like his mother, which I'm not sure is a compliment to either of them..._

> _Sometimes it seems like Radar's from one of the last places in the world where innocence really lives._

> _In that moment, Peg, I swear, as much as I miss you with everything in me, if someone had handed me my discharge papers, I'd have said give them to Radar._

> _He’s started finishing my sentences. Guess that means we're friends now._

She'd give anything to call him back and drag it out of him. He didn't even give her his mother's phone number. And she had a feeling that if she did call back, she wouldn’t find out anything more than she already knew.

> _Gd can that Radar kid eat. Even this food. It's amazing._

She couldn’t help chuckling. What the hell did he think she was going to do? Pack up her whole life and just...leave? She supposed a company clerk might see something, some piece of paper he wasn’t supposed to see, some piece of intelligence. But what could possess him to call her, directly, and tell her to go to Iowa?

> _He **does** sleep with a teddy bear, Peg. Looks halfway like the one in Erin's crib. I about cried when I saw him clutching it. Don't tell Hawkeye._

The phone rang. Peg fell off the bed in her haste, scrambled to her feet with a hasty prayer that Erin would not wake up, not right now, and stumbled down the stairs to the phone. "Hello?"

"Sorry - hang on - twisted - there - hello?" It was an older woman's voice, a little hesitant. "Is this Peg? Peg Hunnicutt?"

"...can I ask who's calling?" She was still breathing hard from her mad dash down the stairs. She probably sounded awful.

"This is Edna O'Reilly. My son called about a lady and her baby. Coming to stay with me. I'm down to it being you or maybe a Korean girl." She paused, but not long enough for Peg to catch up. "Given him, it could be either."

Peg’s breath, and her mind, finally caught up with her mouth. "I'm Peg Hunnicutt. And I do have a little girl. And your son did just call me and tell me to leave my house and go to - Ottumwa? Is that where you are?"

"Ottumwa that's right. He called you?"

"He did. I thought - I thought it was something about my husband. They're serving together." Her voice quavered at the thought that something might have happened to BJ.

The older woman’s voice instantly settled into a sort of urgent calm. "Yes, I know. He writes me about his friends all the time. Listen, Peg. Just tell me exactly what Walter said.”

Walter? That must be Radar’s real name. No wonder he went by a nickname. "He said I should come stay with you, but he wouldn't tell me why."

Mrs. O’Reilly said, "He told me it was classified. He wouldn't lie about something like that.” Another short pause on the line. “I think you should come."

“It’s just so out of the blue. I can’t pack everything up and leave, just like that.”

"Look,” Mrs. O’Reilly’s voice was firm. “Walter knows things. It's a McMann thing. Skipped right over me, thank the Lord."

"Knows things?"

"Before they happen. All the time. The phone before it rings. Storms coming. He knew about Pearl Harbor. Woke up in the middle of the night screaming about planes falling from the sky."

Peg had to slow Mrs. O’Reilly down, had to make both of them calm down so she could make sense of what was happening. "Mrs. O'Reilly, you can understand that I have a lot of questions."

"Ask away, honey." The older woman’s voice had a smile in it.

Peg huffed out a breath. "And also that I'm not used to--following the telephoned instructions of a stranger. Even if that stranger’s mother says he _knows_ things."

"Well, I'm not used to looking up at night and not seeing the North Star," impatience touched Mrs. O”Reilly’s voice for the first time. “It seems a season for strangeness.”

"I'm sorry?"

Silence on the line, then, "Haven't you seen the news? Or looked up? The stars all changed places two days ago. I'm a farmer's wife. I know the stars and they're not where they're supposed to be. Everybody's in an uproar about it."

Peg slid down the wall trailing the phone cord until she sat, knees bent, arms tangled in the phone cord, thinking. Something about the stars. Erin had her fussy time late in the afternoon until just after the dinner hour, so although the news had been on, she hadn’t really paid attention to anything but the weather forecast, (Cloudy, with continued cloudy and occasional spitting rain) and any mention of the word Korea. The eleven o’clock news could just go hang itself for all she cared. If she weren’t up in Erin’s room trying to get her to settle, she was dead asleep at that ungodly hour. She wove the phone cord through her fingers, pensive. “It’s been rainy here,” she said, and her voice came out petulant to her ears.

“Never you mind about that. The stars in the sky are a problem for bigger people than you and me.”

Peg nodded, which was silly since Mrs. O’Reilly couldn’t see her. "I mean, why me? Your son doesn’t even know me.”

"He knows Captain Hunnicutt. And you matter to Captain Hunnicutt."

She could not believe she was actually entertaining uprooting her life and getting in a car with a five month old baby and driving halfway across the country. How many days would it take to drive to Ottumwa, Iowa? "I don't want to impose on you." Or stay with strangers in the middle of nowhere, she thought, more truthfully.

"It's no imposition. House is a bit empty anymore with just the two of us."

"You and Mr. O'Reilly?" Peg found herself asking.

"Me and my brother Ed. My husband died when Walt was tiny."

That shouldn't hit her as hard as it does, but she can't stop the thought. "I'm so sorry."

There was a dismissive little _pfff_ on the other end of the line. "I married a man eighteen years my senior and had children in my forties. It was bound to happen."

Peg offers a silent wordless prayer for the two years separating her and BJ. And he the younger, thank gd. And at war. "Mrs. O'Reilly..." What if he comes home? What if he comes home and I'm not there? What if something happens to him and the army can't find me? What if Erin forgets what our house looks like? What the hell will my mother say?

“Mrs. Hunnicutt?”

What if the car breaks down?

“Mrs. Hunnicutt, I can hear you breathing, are you all right?”

What if I ran out of money?

"Mrs. Hunnicutt, this is a phone call. Even Walter can't read minds at this distance. You're gonna have to say something."

"I'm sorry, I'm just trying to figure this all out. It's kind of a lot to consider."

"It's all right. You want to go confirm the thing I said to you. About the stars?"

"The stars?" She’d forgotten. Something about the stars.

"Like I said. The stars. In the sky. Have moved. It's as impossible as a unicorn on the lawn. And there it is. Do you get the newspaper?”

Newspaper. Right. “Only Wednesdays and Sundays.” Peg shook her head even though Mrs. O’Reilly couldn’t see her. "Of all the things I'm trying to understand right now, that one makes the least sense, I'm sorry. I don't...look at the sky much."

Mrs. O’Reilly chuckled. "And here I am half expecting Jesus to drop by next."

"Excuse me?" Could I even drive for that long? Where would we stay on the way? The fact that she was even entertaining really doing this was starting to scare her. What would the girls say? Mary Jo and Barbara and Annette down the street would start all manner of rumors if she packed up and left.

Mrs. O’Reilly’s voice came back on the line, almost stern. "OK. Peg. Something very strange has happened to the world. You need to go and read a newspaper."

Peg bristled. "Okay, so something's happening with the way the stars are...aligned. And for whatever reason, related or not, your son thinks I'm not safe here and that I should go stay with you?" She thought, vaguely, about the neighbors. If it were really not safe. Should she say something to Mary Jo and Barbara? To Annette? Maybe not Annette.

"Yes. That's exactly it. He wouldn't ask--probably wouldn't know, given you aren't directly acquainted, if it weren't a matter of life and death."

"Do you think I can take a night to think about it?" She looked down at her hand, wrapped tight in the cord, little pink half moons forming where the coils bit in. "I just keep thinking...my husband wouldn't know where to find me."

"Walter will tell him. But not until you go."

She chewed her lip. "Do you think I need to leave right away?"

"I don't know if you have a night. I'm not. I'm not like Walter."

He knew about Pearl Harbor. How old would he have been? Eight? Nine? Impossible. Ridiculous, really. "Mrs. O'Reilly, my daughter is very young...she's not sleeping through the night yet."

"Walt didn't sleep through the night until he was...well actually I think he just stopped getting me up when he was about six.” Her voice got that stern tone again. “I know he usually doesn't get much warning.”

"We don't have much money..."

There's a longish pause. "I'll wire you what you need. I'm not wealthy. But I'll do that. For Walter. "

"No, I didn't mean - no, I just meant that I didn't want to be a burden on you."

"It's no burden. Plenty of room at the old homestead."

"Why do I get the sense that I'm going to hang up this phone and put my whole life in the trunk of a Studebaker?"

This time the breath on the other end was drawn out. Less a huff and more a resigned sort of sigh. "Because if you don't and anything happens to you I will never forgive myself."

Peg's heart hammered against her ribs and her hands started to shake in the confines of the coiled cord. "Okay," she whispers. "I don't know how, but okay."

"You keep in touch on the way, best you can. I will try to get hold of Walter. The military lines are locked up tight right now though. I've been trying to reach him for a couple of days now."

How long did it take to drive from San Francisco to Iowa? She’d have to get out the Rand-McNally atlas under the coffee table and look. She’d taken road trips before, once, memorably, down the California coast and into Mexico when she was younger and wilder. But she had Erin now to think of. “It’s gonna be a rough trip with the baby,” she said.

"Is there anyone you'd trust to go with you?" Her own Ma had said a woman and a baby traveling alone is a target for all kinds of people.

"Not that would be up for a spontaneous road trip to Iowa, I'm afraid." Maybe Barbara. She’d have the spirit for it. But she wouldn’t leave the kids just to take a road trip, and it was the middle of the school year. How the hell does one wash diapers in a station wagon? "Mrs. O'Reilly?"

"Sorry, now I was woolgathering."

"I - I really don't want to hang up, but I think I have to go now."

"Yeah. Call me right before you go. And every time you get to a pay phone. I will be up or Ed will."

"Okay. Okay, I will. Is there anything I should bring?" The question slips out from another world, a world in which people bring casseroles to Armageddon.

“I'm going to pick up formula, but you should bring what you have. Do you have a brand you like?" Another brief pause. "Also if you have a gun, bring that."

"She's not fussy, thankfully. Whatever's cheapest will work. I think I have enough to get us there." A gun? “No, we don't have a gun. Do you think I'm going to need a gun?"

"That's fine, that's fine. No, it’s just good have a spare. For emergencies. Oh, my number." Mrs. O’Reilly reeled off a string of letters and numbers, then made Peg repeat back what she’d written. “You’ll do all right. Bye now.” There was a click, and the line went dead. 

Peg leaned her head against the wall and wondered if she could disappear. Or rewind the last forty minutes. She started to unwind herself from the phone cord. Whatever is happening, it wasn’t anything she'd prepared for or wanted. Life was hard enough without random summons to the Midwest and celestial reorientation. Her head spun. She needed to make a list.

She stood up. Snatched the pad of green notepaper of the stand by the phone, and collapsed onto the couch. The enormity of what she was going to do, and why she was going to do it hit her. The road trip felt in her mind like half frightening inconvenience, half adventure she’d missed not getting to have now that she was a wife and mother. But the reason. Either she was a fool, jumping at the prediction of a stranger who “knew things” when she prided herself on her lack of superstition, or something very bad was going to happen very soon. What if the car broke down in Utah? What would BJ do?

Or maybe the question was - what would his buddies in Korea do for him? And that's when the sobs hit--hard, wracking, stomach-aching. She stuffed a knuckle in her mouth, tried to keep it down. She needed to talk to BJ. Needed to. She set down the green notepaper and took the good stationery out of the writing desk she never sat at, pulled a coffee table book out from under the coffee table and set it on her lap.

> _Dear BJ,_  
>  The world has gone mad. I am driving across country to Radar O’Reilly’s mother’s house because he called me in the middle of the night sounding fit to burst into tears. Please ask him why I am doing this, because I don’t know myself. I miss you so much, and I wish you were beside me. I don’t know if I can do this alone. I hope you are well, as well as you can be in Korea. I don’t want you to come home and not find me here with Erin. I have so many questions and no answers. Why does Radar O’Reilly think we need to go to Iowa? Is something going to happen to us? Is something bad going to happen to the house? To San Francisco? BJ is this it? Are the Russians finally going to drop the bomb?  
>  If this really is the end of the world, I don’t know if I want to survive. But I look at Erin, and I want to give her a chance.  
>  I’m probably just overreacting. If I drive all the way to Iowa and nothing happens, please make sure that kid knows that he made an enemy. But hug him for me either way. 
> 
> _I love you,_
> 
> _Peggy Jane_

__

Peg pressed a kiss to the letter, then slowly, methodically tore it into strips. Then tore each strip into tiny squares, scooped them up in her cupped hands and poured them into the wastebasket. She took a fresh piece of stationery.

> _Dear BJ,_
> 
> _I hope springtime finds you well. Erin is growing and doing so many new things every day. I look forward so much to when you get to see her again. Erin and I are going to visit friends in Iowa for a while. It’s going to be our first big adventure!_
> 
> _I’m in a bit of a rush, so I’ll write more this evening. Give Hawkeye a hug for me and tell Radar his mother sends her love._
> 
> _Miss you so very, very much,_
> 
> _Your loving wife,_
> 
> _Peggy Jane._


	2. What do you pack for Armageddon?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peg begins her journey to Ottumwa with a little help from a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to the_aleator for fantastic beta reading (she added some of the best lines...I ought to give her a co-authorship)

The letter posted, she looked at the clock. 11:40. Erin was still asleep in her pram, which gave her a moment to think. She’d read the paper on Wednesday, most of it anyway, and there had been no mention of stars moving about in the sky or impending nuclear war. She should call Barbara—no, it would be easier to pack while Erin was asleep. She’d pack first and call Barbara later—if she changed her mind, she could always unpack.

When she got upstairs the letters were still laid out on the bed. She gathered them back up, folded each one neatly, and tucked them into the shoebox, then opened her suitcase on the bed. She looked at the shoebox, reached for it, and stopped herself. She clenched and unclenched her fists at her sides, then grabbed it and set it in a corner of the suitcase. If something really was going to happen to her home, she’d want those letters. Especially if something happened to—she shook her head violently to dispel that thought. She forced herself to walk calmly to the jewelry box on her dresser and pulled out her grandmother’s pearls, a polished stone she’d taken from the stream that marked the edge of her family’s property in Oklahoma, and, crossing the room, BJs medical school class ring and a small black box she knew contained his own mementos.

He’d taken her through it the first time the night they were engaged, the lack of any mention of his parents in the assortment of photographs her first inkling of their strange and strained relationship. His class ring. His rowing medal. Photographs of his crew standing in front of their boat, then together, laughing in a bar. There were later additions: A place card and a demitasse spoon from their wedding reception, the nub of a cigar, which puzzled her until she realized it must have been the one he smoked to celebrate Erin’s birth, the pocket watch he’d inherited when his grandfather died last year.

She tucked each of their boxes into a corner of the suitcase. And stared at her closet for ten minutes trying to figure out what outfits would be best for long days in the car, followed by spring on a farm in Iowa. This was not the kind of decision that would ordinarily be difficult for her, but her mind kept slipping off the task at hand. She packed hiking boots for outside on the farm, a spare pair of penny loafers for the trip. One skirt, for church, otherwise jeans and slacks, to be dressed up or down with blouses and flannels. She dumped the contents of her bathroom countertop and medicine cabinet into a canvas bag, tucked it into the outer pocket of the suitcase, and closed her makeup kit. That would do for her. Before she left the room, she collected their wedding photo off the wall and wrapped it snugly in between layers of clothes. One suitcase down. Erin was easier to pack for, given the size of the second suitcase. She scooped out the contents of the baby’s drawers and into the suitcase. If she had everything, she’d be ready for anything. It was a good thing the diaper service delivered on Thursdays.

Erin awakened hungry just before noon, after most of the essentials were packed. Peg scooped her out of the pram and carried her to her baby seat in the kitchen, pulling a couple jars of Gerber from the cabinet. It wasn’t the kind of day when she wanted to get into an argument with her—and anyone who said babies didn’t argue never had one--so she went for strained pears and pureed ham, a couple of reliable favorites.

She’d just gotten half a jar of each into Erin, who was being surprisingly cooperative and would not, it looked like, need a bath and a full change of clothes, when the doorbell rang. “Just a minute!” she called, as though she would be heard. She scooped Erin out of the baby seat and hurried to the door.

Peg’s best in-town friend Barbara stood on the threshold, all three kids in tow, dressed in their sensible Saturday play clothes. She was dressed in a gray skirt and a blue button down, her dark hair pulled into a high ponytail. Stray curls had come loose from the ponytail. “Come in,” Peg said, stepping away from the door.

“I don’t have a lot of time, I’m afraid,” Barbara said briskly, but she came in anyway, stopping in the doorway to stare down at the pile of luggage Peg had staged at the bottom of the stairs. “Where are you headed?”

“I’m going to visit some friends in Iowa.” She tried to make her voice sound light, breezy, but Barbara wasn’t buying it.

“We’re going to my sister’s place in Carson City,” Barbara said. “Mike thought it would be safer.” Peg didn’t quite know what to say to that. She stood, dumbfounded in the doorway until Barbara pushed her backward with the palm of her hand. “You okay, Peg?”

Peg dropped onto the sofa. “It’s just I got a call about an hour ago from one of BJ’s buddies in Uijeongbu,” and it was nice to be that specific and know Barbara would understand, “someone in a position to know. I’ve been packing ever since, half thinking I was being silly.”

Barbara sat on the couch next to her, tucking her into a half hug. It was at times like these that Peg appreciated the six inches and forty pounds Barbara had on her. It was nice to have someone a bit bigger to lean on. “Mike called me last night. Takes a bit longer to pack with three of them.” She turned to look out the front window and Peg could see the three faint bobs of her head as she counted the children running around her front yard.

“Is it the Russians?”

Barbara laughed without humor. “Well, with the whole business about the Earth moving to God knows where everybody’s got their fingers on their buttons. I’d put my money on our guys jumping the gun.”

“Wait. What’s this about Earth moving? I heard something’s wrong with the stars.”

Barbara shook her head. “You have got to get out more, Peg. Or watch the six o’clock news.”

Erin’s fussy time hit at the same time as the six o’clock news, so other than a quick glance at the screen to check the weather (cloudy with continued cloudy and occasional spitting rain) and ears pricked for any mention of Korea, Peg’s only access to the news was the paper, and she only subscribed to it on Wednesdays and Sundays. “I heard something about the constellations,” she hazarded.  
Barbara leaned forward, enjoying being the one in the know. “From what I hear, the sun isn’t the sun, and the stars are different because the Earth has moved. Moved! It’s like something out one of those pulp novels, you know the ones with the women in their nightgowns being carried off by bug eyed monsters?”

“I am familiar,” she replied. Not that she’d read any of them, of course.

“So anyway, Mike said he’d feel better if we were out of the city. Hey,” she said, “If we take Lincoln Highway, you’ll go straight through Carson City. We could take that leg together. I’m sure my sister would put you up for the night.”

Peg ought to feel obligated to refuse, at least once, before accepting an offer like that. With most of her friends, she would have. With Barbara, she just said, “How about I take Jeannie in my car so she and Bobby don’t fight all the way there.”

Erin started to fuss again in Peg’s arms. Barbara reached out to take her. “Are you all packed?”

Peg passed Erin to Barbara, who stood to walk her back and forth across the living room. “I just have to load the car and do a final pass.” She picked up Erin’s suitcase and her makeup case and opened the door with two fingers and her hip.

Bobby heard the door slam behind her and ran to her side. “May I help you with those?” he said, so chivalrously that she had to stifle a laugh.

She responded in kind. “Why thank you, Bobby, you are very kind.” She helped him get hold of the makeup case, which was at the edge of too big and heavy for him. He walked at her side, holding the case in front of him with both hands. It bumped against his shins. She opened the trunk of the Studebaker and lay the suitcase inside. Bobby raised the makeup case as high as he could, tongue peeking out between his teeth with the effort. “Thank you very much, Bobby,” she told him, then returned to the house with the seven year old on her tail.

She collected another small bag to fill with knickknacks she collected nearly at random off the living room walls and out of the kitchen drawers, more to give Bobby another bag to carry than anything else, then passed it to him and picked up her own suitcase to lug out to the car. After the second trip, she turned to the girls crouched in front of the flowerbed and said, “I have ice cream in the freezer that needs to be used up!”

They formed an orderly stampede behind her. How children’s feet could be so small and yet so loud was a mystery she hadn’t yet solved. She led them into the kitchen, then poked her head back out into the living room. “Have you eaten lunch?”

“I fed the kids,” Barbara evaded.

“I’ll make us some sandwiches,” Peg countered.

She pulled out the chocolate ice cream, the tub still heavy enough to promise a serving for each child, filled the bowls, and turned back to the fridge to pull out the rest of the milk, pimento loaf, Miracle Whip, the green Jello with carrots, celery, and black olives Mary Jo brought by earlier in the week—the wisdom of putting black olives in lime Jello escaped her, but food was food.

There was enough bread for six sandwiches, so she made two with the rest of the pimento loaf and four with peanut butter and jelly for the kids to eat later in the car. Barbara walked in slow and bouncy, Erin bobbing on her hip with her fist jammed in her mouth. Peg set Barbara’s plate at an empty place and sat down to regard the Jello concoction sitting like a movie monster between them all on the table. It shivered gently.

“Barbara,” she said between bites, “If that Jello were to suffer a catastrophic accident and fall into the trash, would you tell Mary Jo?”

Barbara shook her head, solemnly. Jeannie, beside her, squirmed in her chair with barely controlled glee. Peg pushed the Jello slowly toward Jeannie, watching her eyes grow wider. “Jeannie, as the cleanest child present, you may do the honors.” She turned to Bobby and Lucy as Jeannie took careful hold of the wobbling concoction. “Drum roll, please.”

Jeannie circled the table with slow steps to the sound of her brother and sisters hands drumming on the table until she reached the trash, took one look over her shoulder to confirm that wasting food was acceptable in this instance, and at her mother’s minute nod, tipped the plate. It slid, first slowly, almost majestically, then Jeannie gave the plate a little shake and it slithered into the trash. She set the plate on the counter, turned back to face them, and bowed, accepting the applause graciously.

*

They cleaned the kitchen and took out the trash in silence. Chances were, she’d be back in a couple of weeks and she did not want to return home to a kitchen full of rotting garbage and, probably ants. Between cleaning up the kitchen and the children—both Lucy and Bobby had required fresh shirts--it was nearly two in the afternoon when Peg finally pulled out of her driveway to follow Barbara’s bumper, Erin content in her basket and bound to fall asleep from the gentle vibration of tires on pavement. Jeannie sat beside her in the backseat, diligently coloring. Peg spared an over the shoulder glance at the house before pulling away. 

They drove to the edge of the city before topping off their gas tasks at the service station. A gangly, earnest faced teenager wiped her windshield briskly after filling the tank and tipped his cap with a “Thank you ma’am,” as she handed him the money. He didn’t have much time for small talk.

The lines weren’t long enough to be truly disturbing, but they were start of Christmas vacation busy during an otherwise not especially notable week in April, what with Easter already a month behind them and summer a month ahead. Peg looked up and saw a line of long, chrome-plated and heavy cars trailing behind them in the gas station. There was a face behind each windshield, all the same, jaw-clenched and weary, the kind of look that said there was a hurricane coming and you couldn’t decide whether to be afraid for your home and family or annoyed at the bother of boarding up windows against a storm that might not come. She pulled away to make room for the car behind her and they were properly on the road. She tuned the radio to KNBC and Listened to Perry Como and Patty Page until the news came on. The girls were, as expected, both asleep.

“It’s 3:04 p.m. this fine afternoon. The skies are clearing and expected to remain clear tonight, giving the Bay Area its first glimpse of the astronomical phenomenon that has scientists scratching their heads from Jodrell Bank to Palomar. Be sure to take a jacket if stargazing is in your plans, though, lows are going to be around forty degrees tonight.”

The hum of the engine and the warm rumble of wheels on pavement, along with a buffeting cross wind put her in mind of sailing on a brisk, but not rough sea. The road stretched mostly straight in front of her, and the presence of just enough activity to keep her from worrying at herself made the news just that much easier to take. It was a thing to love about the open road. She only regretted that she and Barbara couldn’t ride out to Carson City in the same vehicle.

“In other news, peace talks between the United States and the Soviet Union have broken down entirely and both sides have called their representatives away from the table. Korean and Chinese forces are pushing the lines forward along the 38th parallel as Allied forces respond in kind. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, in response to increasing tensions between world powers in light of what scientists are calling Radical Planetary Relocation, has voted to move the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight.”

The news, mercifully, ended, to be replaced by Tony Bennett crooning “Blue Velvet.” Peg sang along, just loud enough to hear herself over the white noise inside the car, pretending she had the kind of voice that ought to be heard in public. An hour passed, and another, the greenery around them growing drier and sparser, the road beginning to curve around round hills and sharper peaks. The girls slept on.

Barbara turned on her blinker. Peg copied her, though there didn’t seem to be an intersection coming up. Barbara pulled over next to a clump of manzanita bushes and got out of the car, bent low against the wind from passing cars and trucks. She walked around the back, opened the passenger side door, and collected Lucy, hurrying with her down the embankment.

Now why would she go off into the bushes? Oh. Right. Peg looked back at where Jeannie dozed, sprawled amidst artwork and picture books. Best do it now. “Jeannie?” she said.

“Mmmmf?” The six year old slid off the seat into the space behind the passenger seat, boneless.

“You need to wake up. We’re taking a bathroom stop.” The response was a wavering whine. Peg opened her door against the shockwave of a big rig. Her heart jumped as it passed. He walked around the back as Barbara did, so as not to have the children out of the car on the side closest to the road, and opened the door. “Come on, Jeannie.”

Jeannie put her arms up instead of crawling into the front seat herself, so Peg had to maneuver her up and around the front passenger seat to get her out the door. Once she was outside and on her feet, she took a critical look at the clump of vegetation, turned to Peg, and said, archly, “That doesn’t look like a bathroom.”

Peg sighed. “No, it doesn’t.” She led Jeannie behind the bushes, where Barbara was busy wrestling Lucy back into her pants. She got Jeannie to step all the way out of her clothes and held her arms while she squatted to pee, then helped her get dressed again.

Barbara waited for them to finish. “I’ll be another minute. Lucy got her shoes and socks.”

Peg winced. “I’ll change Erin while we’re stopped.”

They climbed back up the slope to their cars together. There was too much noise from the other cars to hold a real conversation, so they each settled their respective children into the back seats. Peg lifted Erin out of the Moses basket and into the front seat to change her, glad for once that she and Erin were both petite. Still, it was an exercise in acrobatics, getting a blanket down on to the seat, pulling out a clean diaper and a bag for the dirty one from a pocket her mother had sewn into the lining of the basket—a genius, her mother—then cleaning Erin while she tried her best to wriggle off the seat, all while kneeling on the driver’s seat with the steering wheel digging in just below her ribcage.

She got the job done, tucked Erin back into the Moses basket and the basket back into the back seat. Erin was starting to fuss, hungry. She’d made an extra bottle, but it wouldn’t be warm anymore. “Jeannie, would you like to give Erin her bottle?”

“Yes, ma’am!” Jeannie said with the enthusiasm of a small girl whose little sister had outgrown bottles before she had a chance to provide.

Peg gave her the bottle and showed her how to hold it. “We’re going to drive a little while now, think you can look after Erin for me?”

Jeannie nodded, big eyed and solemn, with the end of one of her braids in her mouth. Peg climbed back into the car and honked to let Barbara know they were ready. They pulled back on to the road. That wasn’t so bad, she thought to herself. It was awkward, but she handled it, and with two children rather than just one. The music on the radio was peppy, her heart was lighter. Maybe this was the adventure they needed.

There was, of course, a gas station on their right within fifteen minutes. 

They pulled in. There was a line again, even out here in the boonies. The boy running the pump flashed a smile and waved through the window at Jeannie and the baby. “Ten gallon limit, ma’am. You want all ten?”

“Yes, that’s fine.” Gas rationing?

“That will be three dollars.” Three cents a gallon more than it was last week. Maybe it was just more expensive out here, away from the city. She and Barbara shared a cigarette while the kids ran off energy. The tension seemed to have worked its way out of most of their fellow travelers, who seemed to have all reached a state of rumpled boredom. Barbara crushed out the cigarette and left to corral the children while Peg bought Coca-Cola and candy bars.

Over the next couple of hours the sky cleared, the evening turned sunny and cool. They drove with the setting sun to their backs, the earliest stars just beginning to wink into view through the front windshield, when Erin decided she’d had enough of travel. Jeannie gamely tried to keep her occupied with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, a strangely evocative choice for the day, but her fussing ramped up in fits and starts to an all out wail. They were less than half an hour from Jeannie’s sister’s place, so she kept driving, knowing stopping would do little good. Jeannie gave up and moved to the far side of the back seat to stuff her fingers in her ears and squeeze her eyes shut.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Peg said, over and over, crooning it uselessly until Barbara turned them off the highway and into Carson City, down unfamiliar streets and up to a low slung ranch house among other nearly identical ranch houses.

Peg rushed to scoop up Erin’s basket. Jeannie slithered past her out of the car and up to the door to the house, her coat bunched in her arms. Peg’s legs wobbled and her back hurt from the long drive, but it felt so good to be out of the stuffy car that she hardly cared. Erin stopped screaming when the cool air hit her face, but started up again by the time Peg reached the door.

She stepped out of the way when the door opened to let Barbara pass. The two women hugged, the children squeezed past them into the house, and Barbara’s sister ushered her out of the doorway to close it against the chill. Peg set down Erin’s basket and brought her to her chest to pace the room.

“Diane, this is Peg, the friend I mentioned on the phone. Peg, my sister Diane.”

Peg nodded her greeting. “Sorry, she does this every evening.”

“We’ve all had babies,” Diane said. “Mine are three and nine months. I’ve got sliced ham and macaroni salad in the kitchen when you get her settled.

Diane’s house was pleasantly cluttered and homey, the furnishings a bit more shabby than her own. She changed Erin on a blanket on the floor, then got up to pace until Barbara volunteered her own arms, saying, “Go. Eat something. I’ll take this shift.”

She found a plate already made up for her. “Another military wife?” Diane asked.

Peg nodded around her food, hungrier than she thought she’d be. “On my way to Iowa to visit some friends.”

“It’s not the best time of year to cross the Rockies.”

Peg took another bite so she wouldn’t have to answer.

“If you’re just getting away from the big cities, you could stay here for a while. Until things settle down.”

It was a thought. But she didn’t want to impose. And she didn’t want BJ to have a hard time finding her. “I’ll think about it. You think things will? Settle down, I mean.”

“Who knows? If nothing else happens, I’m sure everything will be back to normal in a week. Maybe two.”

Peg wasn’t so sure. “We’ll see.” There was a feeling, sitting somewhere beneath her breastbone, a restless energy as she looked at the shabby linoleum floor under her feet, the green refrigerator across the kitchen, the blue and white floral plate she held in her hands, a small chip in the edge that had been carefully painted silver to match. Her appetite had waned, but she scooped in macaroni methodically. There was no way of knowing what tomorrow might bring. And there was no way of knowing either what might happen to her linoleum floor, her aquamarine refrigerator, her china, all of it left back in San Francisco. It didn't matter to her, not really, not at all, not with Erin here. She told herself she believed that, but the feeling of being lost, anchorless, burned stronger. She couldn't know if there would ever be anything to come back to, or anything for BJ to come looking for. All she knew was that she was headed east, across the mountains, and that something was coming, something was happening, and she was alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I am soooooo slooooow. I am working on it. Going to full time teaching has been an adjustment.
> 
> Also lemme tellya my horror story. About 2K into this chapter, my computer shut down and apparently, I had not had the draft set to upload to the cloud because all but the first 500 words (and a cute snippet I shard with Gryffindor Bookworm) were lost! Lost!
> 
> Recreating lost material is much harder than just writing from an outline. Much. Moral of the story: Save early, save often.


	3. A Port in a Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peg drives across Nevada, and the weather catches up with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My favorite antagonist is apparently a good cold front.

Bug Out Peg 3

“I think you should stay here, with us. It’s not a good time of year to cross the Rockies,” Barbara said.

Peg took advantage of her mouth full of maraschino cherries to avoid answering.

They’d played bridge over brandy old fashioneds until it was too hard to do the math, and then moved on to speculating on world events. 

“It’s not going to matter where you go anyway,” Diane slurred. “Once the aliens invade it’s all over for everybody.”

“There’s not going to be any alien invasion,” Barbara chided. “And I think you’ve had quite enough.” She intercepted Diane’s tumbler on the way to her lips. “You’re going to wake up with a terrible headache.”

Peg, who was tipsy but not all that far gone, took the glass from Barbara, finished it off in a swig, and crossed the kitchen to rinse it in the sink, then filled it with water. “Drink this,” she told Diane.  
Diane eyed the water suspiciously. “There are so going to be aliens,” she mumbled into her drink.

“The—whatever—star thing could still have been a natural phenomenon,” Barbara said. Peg was slightly impressed that Barbara managed to get out the word phenomenon in their current state.  
“I doubt that, really,” Peg sighed. Alien invasion didn’t even seem all that farfetched. “I for one,” she said, “Will not be sleeping in a tiny nightie. If little green men come to carry me off in the middle of the night, I am going out with clothes on.”

Barbara snorted. “Speaking of bed. Those five, six—seven kids we’ve got between us—“

“Eight kids,” Diane corrected.

“Eight kids, right, are going to be coming to carry us off to feed them pancakes bright and early. We should get to bed.”

“I’ll take the couch,” Peg said. “That way I can keep Erin right beside me in her basket on the carpet, and I’ll be right by the kitchen to make her bottles.”

“If you’re sure,” Barbara said.

“Very.” True to her word, she slept in her red plaid flannel pajamas, warm and unsexy, the better to discourage bug eyed monsters. The couch was not exactly comfortable, but six hours in a car and three old fashioneds was enough to drag her down into oblivion--

*

\--and out of it with an aching head and an even more aching back and neck. She sat up, spine popping audibly, and stretched with both arms and both legs like a cat, then rolled her shoulders. She could smell bacon in the kitchen. She looked down into Erin’s basket and wasn’t especially surprised to find the baby gone.

She padded into the kitchen in her stocking feet, finger combing her hair. Barbara set a heaping plate of pancakes on the table. Jeannie slipped under her arms to lay silverware next to the plates. “I think Alice is going to be a while,” she said. “Diane’s changing Erin in the bathroom.”

Peg slipped gratefully into a seat and took a share of pancakes. Barbara slid into the bench seat of the breakfast nook beside her. “Stay. Just for a few days.”

“I can’t. I’m expected in Ottumwa. I can’t get a message to BJ about a change of plans.” And she didn’t know whether leaving San Francisco or going to Ottumwa was the most important part of O’Reilly’s message. And she didn’t think she could take another night on that couch.

“Well then, you should get a move on to beat the weather.”

Diane returned with Erin bobbing on her hip. Peg fixed a bottle and fed her, then dressed and fixed her face, the short version, since no one was likely to see her but gas station attendants and Erin. She hugged Diane and Alice politely, then let Barbara drag her into a crushing embrace that lasted too long, like the hug she’d given BJ before he left for Korea and she’d wondered if she’d ever see him come home. Tears pricked her eyes, but they were mostly for BJ, half a world away and in harm’s way. “You take care, all right,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“You too.” Barbara laughed away her own tears and followed her outside to help with Peg’s bags. “Thanks for helping out with Jeannie.”

“Thanks for the loan. She was a big help in the car.” She tucked Erin’s basket into the front seat beside her.

“Call me,” she reminded. “So I know you’re safe.”

“I will.”

Barbara and Jeannie waved from the door while she pulled away. She was alone.

*

Erin wasn’t taking the long drive nearly as well today. Peg found herself driving one handed, the other hand pressed gently to the baby’s chest, jiggling her gently to soothe her fussing. She stopped at every gas station, roadside diner, and historical point of interest to walk and change her, but Erin’s mood ranged from irritable squeaky fussing to inconsolable screams, and she barely slept an hour from morning when they left until late in the afternoon. Payback for sleeping through so much of yesterday, Peg supposed.

She stopped at a diner for an early dinner, taking advantage of Erin finally having fallen asleep. The parking lot was crowded, as was the restaurant, but a waitress saw her lugging Erin’s basket and waved her over to a small table that hadn’t yet been cleared, quickly collecting the dishes into a precarious pile as she did so. “What a pretty baby!” she said, in that soft sort of exclamation that came from people who had been around babies enough to know not to wake one. She set the dishes down gingerly in a bus tub. Peg dredged a tired smile out of her supply of spares and offered it in exchange for a menu and a cup of coffee. “I’ll wipe this clean right away,” the waitress said. She slid between the close-set tables gracefully, the dishes she’d collected held high. Peg turned her face to her menu. A club sandwich sounded good.

“Too many damfools on the road,” a grubby man sitting at the next table grunted at his companion. He smelled of engine grease and cheap cigarettes. “Got hauling to be done and the roads are choked with rabbits running from the cities. Should stay put, let Truman handle it.”

“Damn Russkies are behind it all anyway,” his companion, taller and much younger, murmured into his coffee. If the Russians could do what just happened, they could just make the United States stop existing, Peg didn’t say. The younger one rubbed the stubble along his jaw, noticed her, then gave her a long top to bottom and back gaze.

The older guy nodded, and Peg realized she, too, was staring. She turned her face back to her menu. “Oughta drop a big one on Moscow, show ‘em who’s boss like we did the Japs.”

Grunted agreement from the younger one, and then blessed silence for a few moments. “Roads full of women drivers,” he opined snidely.

The waitress skirted around them, but not quickly enough to avoid a smack to the behind from the younger. Her face registered a brief startle, then resignation, then a false cheer. “You boys be nice,” she told them. “What can I get you, hon?”

“Club sandwich and fries,” Peg said.

“Pie with that? We’ve got apple, cherry, and coconut cream today.”

Peg considered indulging, but it would mean sitting next to the two scruffy geniuses at the next table for as long as it took to eat it, so she declined and handed back her menu.

Scruffy genius number two, the blonde, set down his fork to stare at her openly. “Where you headed, sweetheart?”

Peg turned her face away from him just enough to be cutting, but not so much she couldn’t see him in her peripheral vision. She reached out with a foot to slide Erin’s basket further under the table.

“I asked you a question,” the blonde asked, his voice hardening. And there was a bit of mashed potato on his beard. She shuddered.

“Not safe for a pretty little lady to travel alone,” he continued. What do you say we ride together, long as we’re headed the same way.”

“No thank you, I’ve got it under control,” she told him.

The older one spat into his coffee mug. “I gotta hit the can. Behave yourself, Joe.”

The blonde, Joe, tracked his older companion with his eyes until he was out of sight, then turned back to her with a leer. “I’d even drive, for a kiss.”

Her waitress was standing by her table, club sandwich in hand, having arrived so abruptly and silently Peg half suspected her of witchcraft. She winked and slid the sandwich in front of Peg, then pointedly planted a check on the table beside her. “I see you’re finished. Pay up front.” She wasn’t smiling, and she didn’t leave until Joe heaved himself out of his chair, snatched the check off the table, and made for the counter. Without leaving a tip. Peg hoped the bug eyed monsters who moved the earth ate them. 

“Where’s Joe Senior?” the waitress asked.

Peg chucked her chin toward the bathrooms. Lona stationed herself just outside the mens’ room. There was too much conversation in the diner for Peg to make out what was said, but Lona’s firm thumb pointed at the door was a clear enough message. Joe Senior followed his son out the door.

Peg planned to eat fast and leave, but a couple of minutes later the waitress, Lona she finally remembered to read off her name tag, returned with a slice of coconut cream pie in hand. “On the house, hon. Manager wanted me to let you know he watched until the Parkers got back in their truck and on their way.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“Those two have slapped my ass for the last time. I put up with it because it comes with the job and if I let ‘em, they tip me good, but the minute they start harassing customers, I’m done.” She laid the check on Peg’s table. “I’ll be up at the register.”

Peg finished her pie and left twice her usual tip, then her best guess at what would have been the two jerks’ tip if they tipped fair. She slipped Erin back into the Moses basket and brought her up to the register, only then noticing that the late afternoon sunshine had fled, and the view out the windows was iron gray cloud, tinted green.

She paid her bill and tried to open the front door, which fought her. The wind, cold and damp, whipped her hair into her mouth. She slid Erin into the front passenger seat and closed the door, then turned on the radio in hopes of catching the local weather while they made the next hundred mile leg. With any luck, Erin would stay asleep.

*

She didn’t have any luck. She turned the radio up as loud as she could stand so she could hear it over Erin’s fussing and the very much not soothing crosswind rattling the car doors. The word “Weather” caught her ear and she turned it up a bit more. “…rain at the lower elevations, freezing rain and sleet higher up throughout the evening, heavy freezing rain with up to an inch accumulation overnight. If you don’t have to be out on the roads, don’t be.”

Well didn’t that just make Peg’s day. Rain spattered the windshield with fat, sparse droplets. Her ears popped every minute or so as they drove, though whether it was from the storm or their path up the mountain she wasn’t sure. The droplets gradually became subtly thicker, almost faintly grainy. The road passed between hills most of the time, but now and then it would curve its way around, so that the road was pinned between a wall of rock on one side and a sickening drop off on the other. She slowed down. Spindly evergreens poked out of the sides of the hills and whipped back and forth in the wind. The visibility dropped, but there was nowhere to pull over. Erin wailed.

A truck loomed ahead of her, its taillights swimming in her field of view. She tapped the brakes and the car fishtailed on roads that were suddenly slicker than she had realized. She heard a thump beside her and Erin’s screaming redoubled, but she couldn’t spare a glance to the side. The car came to a stop angled a few degrees off true and a few precious inches from the truck’s back bumper. Beside her, Erin’s basket had slid off the front seat and onto the floor mats, tipped onto its side. She backed the Studebaker slowly and pulled off onto the shoulder, thankful that there was a shoulder here and no steep incline beside it, then put on the parking brake and pushed the driver’s seat back as far as it could go so she could retrieve Erin.

“Shhh, shhhhh,” she crooned while she ran fingers down the chubby little arms and legs, down covered head and round tummy. Not a mark on her. She pulled Erin close then to press kisses to her little tearstained face. She couldn’t sit here for long, though. The car would be a target for the next vehicle to hit that icy patch and they could both be seriously hurt, not to mention out a means of transportation in the middle of nowhere. In an ice storm, no less. They needed to find a safer place to stop. She took a moment to turn the Moses basket upright and settle it snugly into the floor in front of the passenger seat, so if she had to stop suddenly Erin would be as protected as she could be. Peg lay her back down, to her intense protests, adjusted her own seat, and pulled back onto the road.

It was a slow, ugly slog, the hybrid, grainy rain turning into slick gray sleet. Peg crawled up the road, looking for any sign of civilization. Erin alternated between fitful sleep and screaming, but Peg didn’t dare pull over, even though she was due and then past due for a bottle and a change. Twenty miles an hour up hill, around curves and back down, the shoulder often invisible, hoping that the cars behind her were as cautious. It would be easier to see signs of civilization if she could see.

She lost control of the back end two more times, once drifting at an angle down a hundred yards of obscenely steep road, before she saw a blurry blue-white light a bit above ground level some distance ahead of her. It was growing dark. The last time she’d paid attention to the radio it was after six, so it was no wonder she and Erin were exhausted and ravenous. “I know, I know, baby,” she addressed Erin, awake and wailing again, “I want to cry too.” She blinked and sniffed to stop her tears, though. She couldn’t afford the loss of vision, or the distraction.

The low, dingy building heralded by the light turned out to be a Shell station. She pulled up next to the building rather than beside the pumps and opened the door on four inches of ice cold water and slush. Her boots were packed and in the trunk. She sighed, reached into the back seat for the diapers, and changed Erin over her protests, making sure her bottom was scrupulously clean. She was showing signs of diaper rash in all the little creases, probably because she hadn’t been changed for much longer than Peg would ordinarily leave her. Once she was changed and dressed snugly in her union suit and bunting Peg pulled the diaper bag strap over her head to cross her body so she wouldn’t drop it, tucked Erin up close, and stepped out on to a paper thin crust of ice that collapsed under foot. She trudged through the freezing, ankle deep soup until she reached the sidewalk and promptly slipped on invisible black ice. She curled her body to protect Erin and landed hard on her right side, left hip and elbow smacking the icy, wet sidewalk, the impact shocking her right arm to numb, burning misery. She shook it in a vain effort to get the feeling back and sat, still curled over Erin to try to protect her from the combination of wet snow and stinging sleet falling all around them. She swore quietly, in lieu of tears.

A door slammed.

A large, firm hand reached for her. She looked up into an ugly face, missing a few teeth, stained and wrinkled from sun and decades of tobacco, the beard dark and dripping, streaked with gray. He reminded her of the creeps in the diner and she wrenched her arm out of his grasp. He stook a step back, then settled onto his haunches to be at her eye level. “Sorry to startle you, ma’am.” Peg curled her feet under her to get to her knees, good arm still wrapped tight around Erin. “Need a hand up?” he asked.  
She didn’t really want to be manhandled, but she wasn’t sure she could stand on the icy sidewalk with one arm occupied with Erin and the other still numb and burning from where she’s smacked the elbow on the ice covered concrete. He rested his open hand under her forearm without closing it and let her use him as leverage, only tightening his grip for a moment when the injured leg threatened to slip out from under her again.

Once she was standing, Peg tapped the ground with the toe of her right foot. Her hip ached. She carefully shifted her weight to both feet, not trusting the ground or her left hip, bending her knees a little in case she slipped again. “I’m all right now,” she said. She worked her way toward the door, carefully. The whole sidewalk was a sheet of ice. The man opened the door for her, but didn’t reach for her again. Once she was inside, he grabbed a folding chair and flipped it open with one hand, gesturing for her to sit. She dropped into the chair, dripping and chilled, and shifted Erin in her arms. The diaper bag was wet through. She dug through it quickly to salvage the can of formula before the water seeped into the cardboard to ruin it.

“Hold on there, Ma’am,” he said in a gravelly, but soft voice.  
“Hold on there, ma’am,” he said in a gravelly, but soft voice.

He collected a bundle of something stiff and dark under one arm and ventured back outside. She worked her sodden shoes and socks off with her toes. She’d need to warm water somehow to make formula, though as long as Erin had gone, she’d probably drink it cold. Much as it disgusted her to walk around barefoot on a gas station floor, the prospect of putting those shoes and socks on again was even less appealing. She hauled herself back to her feet, opening and closing her hand to dispel the last of the prickles.

The man, who was just about her father’s age, she thought, returned with a large black bag full of something in his arms. “Thought you might want this,” he said. He set the bag down. Inside was Erin’s Moses basket, clean and dry. He chucked his chin at Erin. “She hungry?”

“Yes. I need to get water for her formula.” She moved the Moses basket to rest next to her chair, but carried Erin in her arms toward the bathroom, bottle in hand.

She was surprised to find the bathroom smelled of disinfectant rather than urine and the spigot was clean. Still, she ran the cold water for a count of ten before filling Erin’s bottle. She returned to the folding chair to add powdered formula and shake, then offered it to Erin, who grimaced only briefly before sucking it down, one pudgy hand tapping against the bottle as though to reassure herself it wasn’t going anywhere.

The older man alternated puttering about behind the counter with staring grimly out the window. “It’ll get worse before it gets better,” he said. “You might have to stay the night.”

Peg shrunk into the chair, cataloguing her near surroundings in case she needed to defend herself. Heavy cans of motor oil just behind her. Fire extinguisher by the counter. She was a little closer to the door than he was, but where might she go? She could lock herself in the car, she supposed. Between the warnings from the girls in Carson City and her unnerving encounter in the diner, she was disinclined to spend the night alone with a strange man in a gas station. “I hope it doesn’t come to that,” she said, but she could see out the window as well as he could and found herself marginally less afraid of him—so far--than of creeping up and down the mountains all night in weather like this.

Erin’s head lolled away from her empty bottle. Peg lay her down in the basket and worked the kinks out of her arm and neck.   
“Name’s Dale,” he said. “Baby all right?”

“Peg Hunnicutt,” she responded after only a moment’s hesitation. “My daughter, Erin. She didn’t hit the ground, so I think she’s fine. Just hungry.”

“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hunnicutt.” He handed her a Coca Cola, a Hershey bar, and half an egg salad sandwich, probably from his own dinner. She was hungry enough not to mind.   
“Thank you. And Peg’s fine,” she said. 

He propped himself in another folding chair in sight of the window, feet braced on the ledge, teetering on the back two legs of the chair. They ate for a while without talking, Peg not knowing what she might have in common with a man who lived on the western edge of the Rockies and worked at a gas station. She hazarded a guess. “Bet this place is beautiful in summer.”

“Pretty in the winter, too,” he said. “Up there, sun rises over the bluff, you can sit up there and watch it and you’d think you were the only person in the whole world.” He tossed the paper off his sandwich into the bin. “California plates,” he said.

“San Francisco. I’m going to visit friends. They’re expecting me to call.” She added that last as a warning. People expected her. She would be missed.

Dale nodded. “Should do that before the lines are down then. Use the house phone.”

“You have a phone?”

He nodded. “Run the line out to the pole myself.” He chucked his chin at the counter where the phone rested.

“You don’t mind? It’s a long distance call.”

“So’s everything out here.”

Peg crossed to the phone and got the operator to connect her with Edna in Ottumwa. Dale would know where she was going now, she thought, wondering if he could use that information against her, were he so inclined. The voice on the other end of the line was laconic and male. _“Ed O’Reilly.”_

“It’s Peg. San Francisco Peg.”

_“You all right?”_

“I’m staying the night in a gas station in—“ she paused to look over her shoulder at Dale.

“Just west of Ruth.” He pulled out a cigarette and a lighter, then looked down at Erin in her basket and put it away.

Peg told Ed, “Ruth, Nevada. The roads are too icy to travel.”

_“You take it slow and safe now.”_

“I will. You hear from BJ or, or Walter?”

 _“No. Can’t get through.”_ A moment of silence. _”Edna’s tried a dozen times.”_

Peg waited, but he didn’t have anything further to add. “I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow, then.”

 _“We’ll be here.”_ The connection cut off.

Talkative sort, Ed O’Reilly.

Dale said, “I walk the lot now and then in this weather, look up and down the road. Just in case. Back in a bit.” He shrugged into a stained charcoal coat and tugged on a hat, then was out the door. She watched him through the window while he kicked snow away from the gas pumps, circled out of her sight behind the building, then out to the edge of the lot where his form grew ill-defined in the low light and blowing snow. He paused to look up the road, then walked to the other end of the lot to stare down the other direction. 

After ten minutes or so, he came back inside, shedding snowflakes. “I’ve got a room in the back. It’s small but it’s clean enough. You’re welcome to it for the night.”

Peg didn’t answer right away.

“I won’t be sleeping anyway.” He chucked his chin at the window. “You want your luggage? Before it gets worse?”

Peg nodded. “That would be very kind of you.”

Dale collected more black plastic and headed back out the door. Peg stood by the door to watch in case he needed help. He returned in a couple of minutes with both suitcases. He carried them around the back of the counter and through a second door. “Come on back if you like.”

She picked up Erin in her basket and followed, feeling they were both safer together and was put in mind of Sacagawea and baby Pomp, whose innocence cast an umbrella of safety over the entire Lewis and Clark expedition. A baby wouldn’t deter a truly evil sort, but she might keep an honest man honest. The room was small and dingy with years of tobacco smoke staining the top foot or so of wall, but the bed was made and reasonably clean. A rosary sat on the bedside table beside a Sears-Roebuck catalog and a Zane Grey paperback.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“’Bout eight o’clock.”

“I’m beat,” she told him. “I think I’ll catch a few winks before she wakes back up.”

“Fair enough. I need to keep watch.” He collected his paperback, but stopped in the doorway on the way out. “Door locks from the inside.”

She forgot to lock the door.

*  
*  
She awoke to hard pounding on the door to the little room. “Mrs. Hunnicutt! Mrs. Hunnicutt, you awake?”

She sat up, still in her clothes. She’d left the door unlocked and he still hadn’t come in, despite the urgency in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“May I come in?”

“I’m decent.”

Mr. Macklin opened the door to usher in a pair of kids wrapped in heavy blankets, soaked and blue lipped, a girl of about fourteen and a boy of eleven or twelve. “Oh dear,” she exclaimed, leading them to sit on the bed, despite their state. “What happened?”

He didn’t answer her right away, but instead addressed the girl. “You look after that baby,” he told her. He turned back to Peg. “There’s a car rolled about a quarter mile up the road. These two walked back. Their parents are still in the car, both hurt.”

“I’ll get my boots on.” She flipped open the suitcase to stuff her feet into her heavy socks and good hiking boots, which wouldn’t be great for the cold but would have traction. She pulled an extra sweater over her blouse, then told the kids, “Get yourselves out of those wet clothes. You can wear whatever of mine fits you.” She turned to the boy. “Don’t let your pride give you hypothermia. There’s a pair of overalls and a red flannel will suit you fine.” She pulled on the rest of her winter gear, which was mercifully dry. Dale must have set it all on the radiator out in the station when she went to bed.

Dale stopped her at the door. “Husband’s ankle and arm are hurt, maybe broke. Wife hit her head and isn’t moving much. It’s going to take both of us to get them back here.”

She nodded and they trudged out into dark. The freezing rain had turned to softly falling snow, small favors. Still, a quarter mile along the highway was a long hike in six inches of snow. She stepped in Dale’s footsteps, at first chiding herself for letting someone else take care of her, but as they continued, following the beam of his flashlight as it was scattered by tiny, whirling snowflakes, she consoled herself by reasoning that his feet were several sizes larger, he owned boots that were more appropriate for the weather, and he knew the territory. It occurred to her that he hadn’t said a single thing about her being a woman, and small. He’d just seen the need and sized up that she could handle it. It was refreshing after some of the guys she’d met at school.

On the other hand, when they arrived at the car, which lay on its side with the driver’s side door bent inward, she could see why Dale had brought her along. “You’re not going to fit through the back window,” she told him.

“You will.”

The glass had already been knocked out of the window, the hole covered with a flapping bit of fabric that might have been a blanket or a coat liner. As they approached, a beanie covered head poked up through the hole. Dale shouted, “How’s she doing, Pete?”

The man, Pete, shouted back. “Awake, now. Trying to keep her from crawling out the window.”

Dale waited to respond until they reached the car, which was wedged tightly between a boulder and a spruce. “I brought a friend. She’s going to crawl in and see if she can help you get out, then we’ll all head back to the station together.”

Peg examined the window. Dale, or possibly Pete, had done a good job clearing the opening of sharp bits of glass. “Are the kids OK?” Pete asked.

“Warming up by the radiator,” Dale said. He turned to Peg. “I’ll give you a boost up.” He made a stirrup of his hands. She hauled herself up, glad of muscles made and kept strong by the rigors of sailing, and slid cautiously into the back of the car. He shone the flashlight into the interior.

Pete was holding his wife tightly with one arm. He had the other pressed tight across his middle. “I need to get to the kids. Where are the kids?” his wife was saying.

Peg lay a hand on her shoulder. “The kids are fine. I saw them. They’re wrapped up in blankets at the gas station.”

The woman nodded, one hand pressed to the side of her head. Peg turned to the husband, Pete. “You think you can walk?”

“I can hop,” he said.

“Can I see?”

He squirmed so that his foot was in her lap, yelping once when it touched the side of the seat. It was puffy, but in the dark she couldn’t tell any more. “You got a blanket in here?”

He shoved on at her with the one arm he could use. The other stayed tucked tight to his body. “Let’s wrap the ankle and the arm. Make it easier for you to move.”

Pete nodded. His wife touched Peg’s shoulder. “Where are my kids?”

Peg had to stop and rest her forehead on her laced hands for a moment to keep her composure. “At the gas station,” she told her again. “Safe and warm.”

Pete turned worried eyes on his wife. “It’s all right, Patty. We’re going to see them soon.”

“Hold still,” Peg told him. She took a bit of broken glass to start a tear in the blanket, then tore it into strips. She’d learned how to wrap and injured ankle long ago, back when she was still in high school, but doing it in the dark, with a woolen blanket and fingers already growing numb from the cold was another matter entirely. Tight and immobile was the goal. They could loosen in when they got back to the station. She wound the strip of blanket, starting at the toes, mostly by feel. Pete flinched and squeaked, but didn’t scream or fight her. She wondered how BJ would have done in her place. Well, he wouldn’t have been able to get in the car. Maybe Hawkeye. He was thin as a rail, at least from BJ's descriptions and the one Polaroid. 

“You’re pretty good at that,” Pete said. “You a nurse?”

She shook her head. “Girl Guides.” After she got the ankle wrapped as best she could, she took a critical look at Pete. “If you take your coat off, I’ll bind your arm to your body and you should fit through the window.

Pete nodded. She lay his arm across his chest, the lump in the forearm making it clear even to her that it was broken, and wrapped the rest of the blanket around his whole body to hold it in place, a little sorry she hadn’t thought to bring pins from her makeup case. “Where you all headed?” she asked while she worked, to distract him.

“West from Salt Lake City to California. Patty’s sister’s getting married. We got surprised by the weather. You?”

“Visiting friends in Iowa.” She finished tying up the arm. Dale stood just outside the window arms outstretched. Together, they maneuvered Pete out of the window. Peg pushed his coat out after him.

Patty reached up after him as he left. “Don’t leave me!” she said. She turned back to Peg. “I can’t find my kids.”

“Let’s go get them, Patty.” Peg told her. “Dale, I’m sending Patty out. Don’t let her wander.”

She switched places with Patty to help her maneuver out the window. Dale caught her under the arms and lifted her to the ground. Peg followed, hopping down herself. “I’ll help him walk,” Dale said. “You keep her with you.”

Patty clung to her. They made their way back by flashlight, the snow a little lighter. “Snow plows be by early in the morning,” Dale said. “I can drive these two into the hospital in Ely at six if the weather lets up.”

Peg didn’t answer. Patty leaned on her, but kept veering off course, and she had probably thirty pounds and four inches on Peg. It was all Peg could do to keep up with the men.

When they reached the gas station, the kids were ready for them. Peg could smell hot coffee, which both children were nursing in mugs, Erin was taking a bottle in the girl’s arms, and the boy was already holding the door open for them by the time they made it to the parking lot. He looked comically adorable in her clothes.

Dale put Pete down on the folding chair by the door. The boy crept toward his mother, offering a ginger hug. She squeezed him tight. “I have such a headache!” she said.

In the light, the darkening bruise on her cheekbone and temple was visible, a trickle of dry blood running down from where the corner of the eyelid was torn. “Let’s get you into bed,” Peg said.  
Once Patty was lying down, Peg dabbed the blood off the cut over her eye and bandaged it with supplies from the first aid kit. “Let’s get Pete in here where he can see his wife,” she said.

It took a few minutes. The boy, whose name turned out to be Mike, sat curled on the floor at the bottom of the small bed. He crept closer to his mother a few inches at a time, as if he expected Peg to notice and kick him out of the room. She patted a spot beside her on the floor. “Is she going to be okay?”

“She needs rest right now,” Peg evaded.

Dale and Pete came in through the open door. Dale spread a blanket on the floor and made a pillow of Pete’s coat. Once he got Pete lying down he turned up the radiator in the room. “Gotta keep them warm,” he said.

*

Peg sat on the floor between Erin’s basket and the bed, keeping an eye on the little alarm clock so she could wake Patty Wall on the hour. It wouldn’t do any good, not really, BJ would have known that, hell, Peg knew it. All it would do is let them know if her head injury was getting worse. It wouldn’t make the snowplow arrive sooner. It wouldn’t make the snow stop, though mercifully that seemed to be happening on its own. It wouldn’t make the trip into the small hospital in Ely quicker, either. But it made Pete and the kids feel better knowing that she could be awakened. Her boy slept little spoon in her arms. The girl, restless, paced the floor drinking far too much Coca Cola. Peg switched to root beer and let her look after Erin. She seemed to find the job a soothing occupation. Pete was laid out on the floor with a proper splint on his ankle and a rolled up coat for a pillow, pretending to sleep.

The alarm went off. Peg touched Patty’s shoulder and was rewarded with a mumbled, “I’m still breathing. I’m Patty Wall, it’s April 23rd and I still don’t know where the hell in Nevada we are. Night, Peg.” She tucked her son’s head back under her chin and closed her eyes.

Peg set the alarm clock, let her head fall back against the side of the bed, and allowed herself to doze. Tomorrow, if the weather was clear, she should make it to Salt Lake City, maybe farther. There would be real hotels there, maybe a hot bath and a good meal to make her feel a little less adrift. She was thankful for Dale’s kindness, and in a strange way, for the company of a stranger with a concussion, though she wasn’t enjoying sleeping seated on the floor, cushioned only by her coat. The bruise on her hip ached. She wanted to see BJs face so badly it hurt in her chest, so she wanted to curl around the empty place until it would be full. She knew that no matter what she was going through, Korea was ten times worse, a hundred times worse. But that didn’t make her feel any less alone.


	4. So done with motels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not everyone Peg meets on the road can be trusted.

Peg left for Salt Lake City early in the morning, when Dale closed up the gas station to drive the Wall family in to the hospital in Ely. 

She took an easy day, stopping in Salt Lake City by lunchtime and resting up in the motel. They made good time to Cheyenne, and the next day to Omaha. Erin had grown accustomed to the long hours in the car, watching Peg drive and listening to her sing along with the radio. She wondered if Erin had just come to believe that the car was their new home.

They arrived in Omaha in time for a late dinner on the fifth day of their trip, tired from an extra long drive that day. She was running low on ready cash and the will to drive further when she pulled into the Windchimes Motel. There were a handful of empty spaces scattered through the parking lot, which was a good sign that there would still be rooms.

She pulled into an empty spot, collected Erin, and made her way across the damp pavement. The neon sign reflected smearily in a puddle. A string of jingle bells announced her arrival when she opened the door . The lobby was small and hadn’t been painted in a while, the pale green paint stained yellowish near the ceiling and peeling at the corners and joints. Old Saturday Evening Post covers and gilded paintings of children being shepherded by angels decorated the walls.

Someone, a woman and not young, she thought, was humming just out of sight. The someone rounded a corner to stand behind the counter. She was perhaps fifty or a little older, graying hair twisted into a bun on top of her head, the loose wisps making a halo around her face in the yellow lamplight. She wore a silvered nametag that proclaimed her to be “Caroline.” “My goodness,” she said, “It’s late to be out with a baby.” She smiled and leaned forward a little to get a look at Erin, tucked up in Peg’s arms. “Hello, darling!”

Erin favored her with a gummy smile and hiccupped a laugh. Peg smiled back at both of them in turn. “Started from Cheyenne this morning,” she said.

“And you wanted to make it to a real city before you stopped, am I right?”

Peg nodded. “Please tell me you still have a room.”

“That I do. Pay up front. I know it’s inconvenient, but I’ve had some trouble this week with guests leaving at five in the morning without paying their bill. Having the motel full up like this in the middle of spring is good I suppose, but I’m glad people are finally starting to settle down a little.”

“Everyone who was going to leave probably has by now.”

“And you?” the woman said while plucking a set of keys off a pegboard, “I’m assuming you’re not on vacation.”

“Visiting friends in Iowa,” Peg replied.

“Right.” Her eyes narrowed and she looked Peg over as though she were trying to decide how likely her check was to bounce. “You make any calls, they’ll be added to your bill. You can pay for that in the morning. Twelve dollars.”

Peg wrote the check and collected the key, too tired to continue the small talk and besides, she wanted to check in with Edna before bed. Just to see if there was any word. 

The room smelled faintly of mildew, under the almost-roses smell of whatever was used to clean it. She put up her suitcases and fed Erin her formula mixed with warm tap water, changed her into her pajamas and let her try to roll over in the middle of the bed while she placed her nightly call to Ottumwa.

She waited for the operator to connect them. _”Edna O’Reilly,”_ the voice on the other end of the line said.

“I’m so glad I caught you before bed,” Peg exclaimed in spite of herself. “Have you had any word from the boys in Uijeongbu?” She was so glad she wasn’t reduced to pulling conversational tidbits out of Ed, tonight. Talking to that man was like talking to a stone.

 _“Walter got through earlier today,”_ Edna said.

Peg’s pressed her hand to her chest, unsure whether to be grateful or terrified. Real news from BJ, or even from where BJ was precious—but why had Walter called. Was there some new crisis? Had something happened to BJ?

_“Peg?”_

“Sorry. What did he say?”

_“I told him you were on your way here with the baby. He sounded tired. A lot of wounded, he said, no time to sleep.”_

“They said on the radio there’s been a lot of fighting.”

Silence on the line for a few seconds, then, _“He said he was glad you were coming, and I should keep you as long as I could. And to expect more visitors.”_

“Sounds like he’s not allowed to talk about whatever’s going on.”

_“Exactly what I thought.”_

Peg kicked off her shoes and stuffed her feet under the bed covers. “I should be there tomorrow. Looking forward to sleeping in one place for a while.”

_“I never much liked long trips, myself. How’s the baby?”_

Peg smiled down at Erin, who had managed to flip herself over and was looking up at Peg with the most self-satisfied look on her face. She took a moment to scrunch her nose up at the baby, who squeaked a giggle. “Erin’s fine. She’s taken to traveling really well. I think she likes having me trapped right next to her where she can watch me for hours at a time.”

_“Oh well, that’s one good thing, then. So, will I see you tomorrow?”_

“I’m in Omaha and I’m getting an early start. So I think I’ll be there by dinner.”

_“Supper?”_

“Yes,” Peg said, though she wasn’t sure what the difference was.

_“I’m so looking forward to having a baby in the house again.”_

“They’re louder than you probably remember,” Peg teased. “Well, I’m going to make an early night of it so I can get on the road sooner. You’ve been a godsend this whole trip. I can’t believe I’m going to meet you in person tomorrow.”

_“I’m looking forward to it. You have a good night, now.”_

“I will.” Peg hug up the phone. One more day on the road and she’d be—what? Not home. But at least somewhere stable. With people who at least seemed kind on the phone. She played with Erin for a little while, until her little eyes started to droop and her voice got that whiny, fussy cast that meant she was either going to fall asleep or work herself into a tizzy, then she rocked and paced until the little body grew heavy and soft in her arms. She tucked Erin into the middle of the bed and changed into her nightclothes, turning her back only long enough to scrub off her makeup and brush her teeth at the sink. 

She caught her reflection in the mirror. She looked old. Like she could be thirty. Could a person age five years in five days? It hadn’t even been that difficult a trip, with the exception of the ice storm in the mountains—that would gray anyone’s hair. She turned her back on the woman in the mirror—would BJ recognize her? Of course he would, she was being ridiculous. She was just tired.

She crawled into bed, settling Erin into the crook of her arm so she wouldn’t roll away. And of course, in the near total darkness provided by the heavy curtains, with the sound of the heating unit humming soothingly under the window, Peg couldn’t sleep at all. She wished so fervently for BJ to slide into bed behind her, to wrap his arms around her, so she could feel his chest press into her back, the way his knees would fit just behind hers. She could tuck her feet in between his calves to warm them and he’d pull away, but only for a second, because he liked being able to keep her warm.  
Was he okay not having anyone to keep warm? What was it like in Korea this time of year? Sloppy and damp with a chill that fled only when the sun burned off the fog? What time was it in Korea? She calculated in her head, remembering a couple of times he’s called late in the evening. It would be just about lunchtime. Was he sitting in the mess with his friend Hawkeye and Edna’s son, eating bad food that he claimed wasn’t nearly as bad as his friend Hawkeye said it was? 

Was he in surgery? She shied away from picturing it. She was glad BJ was a doctor, he was good at it, it made him happy, and he made the world better by it, but she was not interested in hearing about the insides of people. As far as she was concerned, she’d heard more than enough of that in health class, and seen more than enough of it helping Dale stabilize Pete Wall’s leg in Nevada. BJ was out there, fighting the good fight and sometimes losing—he didn’t tell her about the losses, usually, but she could read between the lines. Was he safe? Was he at least no more in danger than he had been last week? She knew the answer to that and it would not leave her be. She was glad BJ had found a Hawkeye out in Korea. So he’d be less alone. Maybe someday she’d get a chance to meet him. 

Her mind turned over the snippets of news. The Doomsday Clock, moved not so much because the Earth was no longer a constant, but because wise men believed that the unexpected made dull and suspicious men more likely to commit mass murder. The weatherman on the radio, explaining how scientists were measuring the light coming from their new sun and the Earth’s new orbit in order to predict how the climate might change in response, and how the weather forecasts might not be as accurate for a little while. Chirpy DJs arguing over whether a new sun needed a new name. It was maddening. A nine days’ wonder should last nine days and be forgotten. Tomorrow would be what, day eight? Peg just wanted things to go back to normal, new sun or no new sun. 

She didn’t know how long she lay in the dark, listening to the puffs of breath coming from Erin’s nose. There was a sound at the door, a faint thump, as though someone had bumped it in passing. Peg’s mind registered the sound but she thought nothing more of it until, perhaps half a minute later, there was the skritch of a key sliding into a lock. Heat flooded her chest at the same moment as her limbs grew cold, and her half asleep stillness changed to frozen tension. She made herself relax. It was only someone mistaking her room for another, they would be gone when they realized the key wouldn’t turn in the lock.

There was a faint click, the doorknob turned, and the door squealed faintly on its hinges as it opened. Peg lay still, but stiff in the bed, feigning sleep. She was facing the door, so if she opened her eyes she’d be able to see the intruder. And whoever it was would know she was awake. She willed her face to relax, then let her eyelids drift up just enough that she could see through her eyelashes.  
It was the woman from the front desk. Looking straight at her, as if trying to determine whether or not she was awake. In the dimness and through her eyelashes she could barely make out her shape, just enough to be fairly sure it was the same person. She didn’t see anything that looked like a weapon, but she couldn’t be certain.

Her options scrolled through her mind while “Caroline”, who she had thought was the owner of the motel, crept through her room. She wished she’d had the energy to take that self defense class they’d offered at the Y back when she was pregnant. If she’d been alone, Peg would have leapt out of bed and confronted her right then. Erin slept on her arm, a sobering complication. She racked her memory for weapons to hand and thought of her purse, which was heavy enough to at least knock someone off balance. Most likely, if she confronted the woman, she would simply flee, and Peg would gather up her things, stuff them in the car and drive on to Ottumwa for the rest of the night without paying her long distance bill.

But it was possible she would be violent, or would try to win some concession from Peg by threatening Erin. They might be safer if Peg feigned sleep until she left, and only then packed up all their things and headed for Ottumwa. She wondered what time it was, really. She moved out of Peg’s line of sight, and Peg didn’t dare turn her head to see where she had gone.

It was also possible the woman intended to brain her in her sleep.

There was a rustle and faint jingling. The thief was going through her purse. Peg wouldn’t make it to Ottumwa without a wallet and car keys. She used the noise to cover sliding her arm slowly upward, under the pillow and out from under Erin’s head. The baby’s arms flew up when her head dropped to the bed, but she didn’t awaken. Once she was disentangled from Erin, she gave herself one breath to rehearse in her head how she would move. Roll over, plant her feet, face the woman with her hands open and raised to defend herself.

She rolled out of bed. The sheet caught on her ankle and nearly tripped her, but she recovered. “Caroline” turned around, eyes wide. Her nametag glinted on her chest. “Just what do you think you’re doing?” Peg demanded, surprised that her voice sounded so firm. They stared at each other for a beat, and she snatched up Peg’s purse and made for the door. “No way,” Peg said. “Get back her with that!”

The woman outweighed Peg by a good forty pounds and was at least a couple of inches taller. She broke into a run. Peg ran after her, barefoot. She tried to pass between Peg’s car and the one right next to it, catching her dress on a bit of chrome, so it tore and she dropped Peg’s purse on the ground. “Well, isn’t that just—“ she said, bending to scoop up Peg’s purse.

The moment’s hesitation gave Peg a second to catch up. “Give me my purse.” Peg said.

The thief turned to run. Peg leapt at her, knocking her to the ground and tangling herself in the woman’s skirt. Peg managed to wrestle her purse away, scraping her knuckles in the process. Lights came on in other rooms and Peg could hear doors swinging open and the slap of more feet on the ground. The woman elbowed Peg in the face and rolled away while Peg grabbed her own nose, blinking at the pain. Hands were on her from behind and she struggled for a moment, panicked, but was held tight. The thief’s pelting footsteps were interrupted. “Let go of me you big, dumb—"

“She’s going through people’s rooms and stealing things!” Peg shouted. 

The woman struggled for another moment, then sagged against her captor, a young man wearing only boxers and a t-shirt, his hair still mussed with sleep. “Maybe she’s the thief,” she said.

“Is that really the best you can do?” Peg said. “Check that bag she’s got. I bet I’m not the only person she’s stealing from.”

Another just awakened motel guest, this one a woman, patted the thief down and came up with a string of pearls. The person holding Peg released her. “I need to check on my baby.” She hurried back to her room long enough to look in on Erin, still sleeping in the middle of the bed. She turned back around. “I’m going to call the police.”

She sat down on her bed, gingerly so as not to disturb Erin, and got the police on the line, but was put on hold. The adrenaline that kept her locked into the moment, acting and not thinking about it, ebbed, leaving her spent and shaking. She wasn’t sure she would be able to speak to the police without her teeth chattering. Erin slept on, unfazed by the commotion. Peg struggled to get ahold of herself and wished she weren’t alone.

A teenaged girl appeared in the doorway. “Tell everyone to check to see if they’re missing anything,” Peg said. The girl nodded and left. Peg could see people, most of them in pajamas, through the open door of her room. She sat on hold for ten minutes, while other motel guests kept the clerk turned thief from leaving. The room was getting cold. The teenager returned with a box. “We got this stuff off her. Is any of it yours?”

Peg wondered, still sitting on hold as she picked through the box, whether they really ought to be taking their things back, since it would make it harder to prove the motel clerk had stolen them in the first place. She fished through the box and found her wallet, her passport and tin of mints—who steals a tin of mints? The girl took the box, which still held someone else’s wallet, along with a few pieces of jewelry and some other things she’d passed over as not hers and therefore not worth remembering. 

Finally, there was a click on the line and a man’s voice said, _“Omaha Police department.”_

“I’d like to report a robbery,” Peg said. “Several robberies. Starlight Motel.” She read the address off the business card. “A motel employee came in my room and stole my wallet out of my purse while I was sleeping. I surprised her and she tried to run away. Some other guests are keeping an eye on her.”

_“All right. Did anyone else see this happen?”_

“Some of the other motel guests. She had stuff on her belonging to other people, too.”

_“Where is the suspect now?”_

“Let me check.” She lay the phone down and walked to the doorway. The woman stood against the wall, arms folded across her chest, surrounded by several other people. She returned to the phone. “Outside. We’re keeping an eye on her.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. _“We’ll be there as soon as we can.”_ The connection broke and Peg was left alone again. She bit her lip and rubbed at her nose, which still hurt with a dull, half numb throb, though a quick look in the mirror in her compact showed she wasn’t bleeding. She would not cry.

Arms, she needed arms.

A middle aged woman came in her room along with the teenaged girl, carrying cups of hot coffee. “I’m Julie, and this is Lisa,” the woman said, passing her a mug. “It’s decaf.” She wrapped her housecoats around her more tightly. “Not that any of us are going back to sleep.”

Peg accepted the coffee numbly. Julie sat on the bed. “You were amazing, going after that woman like that. I know I couldn’t have.”

Peg shook her head. “I’m not. I didn’t think at all. Isn’t that silly?” A sound halfway between a chuckle and a sob escaped her, and she deliberately pushed it in the direction of laughter.  
“That lady is the owner’s sister, I guess. The owner’s driving out so we don’t all have to leave in the middle of the night.”

Peg nodded gratefully, then sniffed, and felt the waterworks coming on. “Hey,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“This is so stupid, but.”

“But what?”

“I wish my husband were here to hold me. Or my mom. Or just—somebody.”

Julie slid closer and wrapped a plump arm around Peg’s shoulders, then patted the bed for her daughter to come closer. They sandwiched Peg between them while the shakes subsided. Peg looked up at the ceiling to blink tears away and waited for the ache in her throat to subside. “I really was scared,” she admitted. “If it was just me it wouldn’t be so bad, but with Erin in here? I imagined what might happen to her if someone wanted to hurt her.” Her eyes tracked down to the soft curve of Erin’s cheek, echoed in her delicate eyelashes. “She’s so little and so fragile.” 

Julie rubbed her back. “I know. It’s a mom thing. They make you grow. Your heart gets bigger to hold them.” She reached across Peg’s back to squeeze her own daughter’s arm. “And so do your claws.”  
Peg wanted BJ home and safe, in a warm, comfortable home by the sea where she could sail and watch the sunset on the water. She didn’t want to know how sharp her claws might have to grow before the world made sense again.


	5. One hell of a week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peg finally arrives in Ottumwa, but has one more challenge to overcome.

Morning came too soon. Was it too much to ask for an uninterrupted night of sleep? Peg packed her things and swore she’d avoid Omaha for the rest of her life, if possible. It was a relief to get back in the familiar seat of her familiar Studebaker and back onto the highway. Erin gurgled in her seat, Johnny Ray crooned on the radio, and all was, temporarily, right with the world. The sun, whatever they were going to call it, shone in the sky in front of her windshield, as bright as the old one had been.

The day passed before she knew it. She turned off Lincoln Highway onto the smaller county roads that led to the farmhouse outside Ottumwa where the O’Reillies lived. The roads grew rougher and narrower, and when she turned off onto the country road that led to the O’Reilly home, went from paved to gravel. The car was going to be a dusty mess by the time she arrived. 

She turned onto the rutted driveway. It was raggedly lined with trees, mostly pine and hackberry, with a few larger oaks interspersed. A clump of cottonwoods barely visible where the property dipped indicated there must be a creek down that way. A lone sheep looked up from its grazing to regard her with vague curiosity. The only vehicle in the driveway was rust brown truck at least fifteen years old. As she pulled to a stop, a flock of mostly chickens and a couple of turkeys scattered away.

The house was nestled among more trees and shrubs. The paint was white and peeling in spots, the porch large and well swept, with a swing and a pair of rattan rockers in front. Peg gathered Erin off the passenger seat and zipped her bunting. When she opened the car door, warm late April air blew in, much warmer than when she’d stopped last. She peeled Erin out of the bunting and left her own coat on the passenger seat of the car.

A pair of labs, one black, one yellow, swarmed her as soon as she stood up. They sniffed and chuffed at her ankles, then, as they grew bolder, worked their way upward, all the while impeding her progress toward the front door. The yellow lab buried its nose in her butt and she yelped and shouted, “Naughty doggy!” just as the front door flew open and a stocky man in his sixties jogged down the stairs.

“Marjie, Mick, you get away from her! Heel!”

The dogs decidedly did not come to heel, but they did give Peg enough space to move around them. They hopped about circling her at a distance of a few feet, tongues dangling out the sides of their mouths, tails whipping back and forth almost too fast to see. Peg made sure to watch her feet while making her way up the yard. Between turkeys and dogs and who knew what all else, she was sure there was plenty she didn’t want to step in.

Erin watched the animals with wide eyed fascination, mouth open in an earsplitting grin. Peg climbed the steps to the front door and was ushered inside by a woman in a cream colored blouse and a brown skirt that reached her calves, covered with an embroidered apron. The woman stepped back to have a look at her, eyes twinkling. “You must be Peg and Erin,” she said. “I’m Edna O’Reilly. Make yourself at home, would you?” Peg settled onto a couch covered with several layers of smoothed out blankets and quilts. Ed followed her into the house, carrying Peg and Erin’s suitcases. He turned left into a room at the bottom of a flight of stairs.

Peg took a moment to catch her breath. Edna dropped into a chair beside her, her hands in her lap, a dishcloth captured between them. She was short and round and more cute than pretty, with a face that might not have turned heads when it was young, but wore wisdom well. She leaned just a little forward, watching Erin watching her. “Would you like to hold her?” Peg asked.

“Would I?” Edna lay the dishtowel aside and held out her arms.

Peg passed Erin to Edna, making sure the baby could still see her. Erin squealed and reached for the ruffled edge of Edna’s apron. Edna bounced her gently. “It’s been a while. Walter’s oldest sister had her last baby going on five years ago, and my last baby just got married at Christmas. So young, but you know how kids are, they get out of high school and they want to marry their sweethearts straight away. Martha’s young man’s a good one, though. Steady even if he’s not too smart.”

Just out of high school. Peg was glad she’d waited a few years to marry, not least because otherwise she wouldn’t have met BJ, but also because she’d had a little time to be just Peg before becoming someone’s wife and someone else’s mother. “I imagine the house feels empty without her,” Peg hazarded.

“A bit. Though it’s filling up again, isn’t it?” This last she addressed to Erin while pulling a face. Erin giggled. “How was your trip?”

Peg shrugged. “Had a little excitement last night. The motel clerk broke into our room and tried to make away with my car keys!”

Edna shook her head. “My goodness. You just can’t trust city people.”

“Hey, I’m city people!” Peg exclaimed in mock offense.

“I know that, but you’re all right. I know people. And I knew the moment you walked in that door you were good people.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t been? Hide the silver?”

It was Edna’s turn to chuckle. “Any silver we ever had in this house didn’t make it past 1936. But I knew Walter wouldn’t send me into trouble just to get you out.”

She adjusted Erin on her knees, her face pinching into a frown. After a moment, she seemed to come to a decision. “We may have guests after dinner. Some people who wanted to talk to you.”

“What kind of people?” Peg asked.

“Just try to be friendly. Not too friendly, mind.” She seemed to search for something else to say, then came to a decision. “I’ve got supper to put on.” She handed Erin back to Peg. “You stay there for the moment. The television does work, though it’s a bit grainy, depending on the weather. It’s about time for the five o’clock news.”

Edna stood to turn on the television and fiddle with the antenna. Ed banged through the front door again, genially, his laden arms keeping him from catching the spring loaded screen door. Once he dropped off his load in the room by the stairs, he thumped into the living room and dropped into a chair to watch the screen.

“Heading the news this evening, the struggle for control of the Korean peninsula has heated up. Battle lines continue to shift. The United States pushes northward by way of the South China Sea, while the North Koreans are intensifying bombing campaigns inland.”

Peg chewed her lip, thinking of BJ so close to the fighting. 

“The full United Nations General Assembly began three days of emergency meetings today in which they will review information gathered by scientists across the globe. President Truman, who plans to attend, released a statement today reminding Americans to keep to their usual routines and not to spread inflammatory rumors.”

 _Keep to their usual routines._ Well, she’d certainly turned that directive upside down. She would have kept to her usual routine, with work and getting her real estate license and taking care of Erin and worrying about BJ overseas if she hadn’t listened to a warning she had no good reason to listen to. Who were these people anyway? Ed sat in his chair, bathed in the light of the small television as though transfixed, though perhaps he was just very tired. Edna—and who names siblings Ed and Edna anyway?--puttered in the kitchen, getting dinner on. They reminded her of a shorter, softer American Gothic.

She left Ed with the television to join Edna in the kitchen. Edna shooed her with a dishcloth. “Oh, you don’t have to help, you’ve been driving all day, you’re probably tired.”

“I’ve been driving all day, I’d rather not sit for a while,” Peg said. 

There wasn’t anything left to do, really. The table was already set. Edna was finishing gravy for a roast chicken. The mashed potatoes and asparagus were already on the table. “Walk back out to the living room and tell Ed his supper is ready, then.”

Peg took the few steps back to the living room. “Supper’s on,” she said, not quite comfortable calling him Ed, but not sure what his last name was.

Ed heaved himself out of his chair. “I’m coming, I’m coming Edna,” he said. He made a detour into the room at the bottom of the stairs, the guest room, Peg supposed, returning with Erin’s Moses basket. “You’re not going to hold her while you eat.”

“If she lets me put her down,” Peg agreed.

“If she doesn’t we’ll just have to take turns holding her, won’t we?” Edna said with something approaching grandmotherly relish. She gestured for Peg to sit. Peg lay Erin in the basket, turned so the baby could see her. Ed and Edna sat, and Edna served the chicken.

Peg only got to eat for five minutes before they were interrupted, not by Erin, but by a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” Edna said, as both Ed and Peg were rising from their seats. “It’s probably those nosy government men. I think they’ve been waiting for you to get here.”

Peg felt the blood leave her face. Ed set down his fork. “They’re nosy, but they’re harmless. Hell, anyone afraid of a handful of turkeys isn’t worth worrying about.” A part of Peg worried anyway, but another part wondered if she might be able to get them to let slip a little of what was going on in Korea. If they knew. Any connection, however tenuous, with her husband was worth an uncomfortable conversation.

Peg wiped her mouth, straightened her clothes, and walked into the living room without having to be called there. Two men in uniform, one improbably spangled with medals, the other more decorously sporting several bars of color coded ribbon that likely stood in for more medals than would fit on the other man’s chest, stood in the doorway. Edna stood facing them, arms crossed, feet planted. “We are having supper at present. Can’t it wait?”

The shorter, stouter one, whose uniform proclaimed him to be General Clayton—a General, here? That was saying something. Peg didn’t know whether to be frightened or intrigued. “Let’s get this unpleasantness over with as quickly as possible so you can get back to enjoying your evening.”

The two faced off silently for another few seconds before Edna relented. “You’re not staying for pie,” she told them, then stepped aside.

“Ma’am,” General Clayton said. “We have a few questions for you. If you’ll follow me.” He gestured toward the room where Peg’s belongings had been taken.  
“She can answer your questions here in the living room, sir.” Edna said.

“We don’t want her answers influenced by your presence.”

“Well then, I’ll go in the kitchen and you all can talk. But I’m keeping the door open in case there’s any trouble.” She addressed the last to Peg directly, then strode out of the room, passing close enough to squeeze Peg’s hand on her way out. Peg followed the two men into the guest room, which had been made up with a cot and a cradle. The men sat in the two chairs, leaving Peg to perch awkwardly on the cot.

Clayton started. “We just need to get the story straight on why you decided to take this trip.”

“A lot of people have taken it upon themselves to do a little traveling, lately,” Peg observed.

“Just answer the question,” the one with all the medals snapped.

Peg smiled sweetly at him. “How about I answer a question and then you answer a question?”

Clayton frowned. “If you cooperate, I am willing to answer a few questions about matters which are not classified. We know you received an unauthorized call at eleven a.m. Pacific time six days ago from Corporal Walter O’Reilly. Roughly three hours later, you left your home along with your daughter in the company of a neighbor.”

“Those statements are both true,” Peg allowed.

“What did Corporal O’Reilly say to you that convinced you to leave?” Adams asked. He kept his voice casual, as if they were just having a friendly chat. Disarming. The presence of the man next to him, leaning forward and tense, ridiculous medals clinking, ruined the effect.

Peg thought. She’d decided to confine herself, if she had to lie, to lies of omission, so her story would match Edna O’Reilly’s and Walter’s, presuming he had been questioned as well. She hoped he hadn’t gotten into too much trouble. “He said that I should leave San Francisco and visit his mother in Ottumwa, that it was really important that I did.” She paused to think. “It wasn’t so much what he said as how he said it. The poor kid sounded on the verge of tears.”

“Do you often make cross country trips on the advice of crying young men you don’t know?” Medals said. She finally took the time to find his name badge among the blaze of decorations. Colonel Flagg. How…appropriate.

“I spoke to Mrs. O’Reilly, as I’m sure she’s told you. She described her son as being trustworthy and insightful. As has my husband.” She thought about the letters stashed in her suitcase and hoped they wouldn’t search her things and possibly take them away as evidence.

Clayton tapped fingers on the table. “Are any of the following names familiar to you? Commander Spock. He might have referred to himself as Corporal Spock. Captain, or possibly Lieutenant Commander Leonard McCoy, commonly referred to as Dr. McCoy or Bones. Captain James Kirk?”

Peg searched her memory, but couldn’t remember anyone by those names in BJ’s letters. “Sorry, no, I’ve never heard of any of them.” What was it with doctors and silly nicknames? She was also pretty sure Lieutenant Commander wasn’t an Army rank, though she had to admit to herself she hadn’t paid that much attention. 

“You’re sure nobody answering to Spock called you? Talks like a professor,” Flagg added, leaning forward aggressively in his seat.

“No, no one called me except Corporal O’Reilly and Mrs. O’Reilly. No one.” She made her voice firm. She’d had enough trouble in college dealing with professors and upperclassmen who thought they could intimidate her to put up with is from this military peacock.

“Seems strange you’d just put your life on hold, pick up and drive out here for no other reason than some kid you barely know asked you to,” Clayton said. “You’ve got to admit that’s a bit strange.”  
“You’ve got to admit it’s a bit strange that the whole planet isn’t where it was last week,” Peg snapped. She noticed that her hands were balled into fists. She flattened them out deliberately. “I’m not answering any more of your questions until you answer a few of mine.”

Flagg leaned forward far enough that she could smell the cigar on his breath. “Look, ma’am, if you don’t do your duty as an American, it’s not going to go so well for you—“

It wasn’t so much Flagg’s behavior that let Peg know he was a weak link as it was Clayton’s. The general started in alarm, his attention off Peg and on his companion. Peg knew when to take advantage. "Do you know what I heard on the road, Mr. Flagg?"

Flagg bristled. "Colonel, Missy."

"I heard a lot of talk about aliens, Mr. Flagg." Which was true enough. Who else was going to pick up the Earth and throw it across space.

"There's a lot of distance to travel between here and California, and news travels fast. Why it could be halfway across the country by now." She looked away from Flagg only long enough to flash her best mock-innocent smile at the General, then rested her gaze on the Colonel. 

Flagg spluttered. "If you heard this from that little pipsqueak--" In the kitchen, a frying pan hit the stovetop, hard. Flagg's weaselly eyes darted right. 

"Weren't you listening?" She cut in ruthlessly, "Lots of people are talking about it. Even to a little woman like me, Mr. Flagg." Wait, she was right about the aliens? There were actual aliens? Were they here?

“Nobody is talking about aliens, Mrs. Hunnicutt because nobody knows about aliens. Not even ones with green blood and pointed ears. Nobody knows about that because I don't even know it.” Oh, how interesting! Peg opened her mouth to add a little encouragement, but the Colonel didn’t appear to need any.

Clayton's hand was making a desperate cutting gesture. But Flagg was in full, starch-plated, medal-decked Colonel mode now. "And nobody knows about time travel or space ships or anything of that.”  
“Colonel!” Clayton said. “You will be silent and that’s an order!”

But Flagg wasn't going to be cut off in a full head of steam, and rose to his feet to loom over her. Peg refused to yield an inch of space, and looked up into his face with the same, pleasant, plastered on smile. She might have been quivering inside, but she wouldn't show it to this crazy brute. Not if he was tall and broad as Goliath. "And if you hear another word from that bunny-loving, four-eyed midget at the 4077th about Commander Spock--one single word about strangers in Uijeongbu--stranger than the North Koreans or that bozo in a ball gown--one word and I'll have his corporal’s bars for garters. See how he likes it at the front! Is that understood, Missus Hunnicutt, if you are who you say you are." 

From the kitchen a cavalcade of iron cascaded down. Peg stood up to stare him in the chest, then looked up into his face. "And what if you aren't who you say you are Mr. Flagg? How do you know about aliens or Uijeongbu or....maybe Commander Spock?" She teased the word out, watching his face go from red to puce. In the next moment, Peg honestly believed he would have struck her if Clayton hadn't been sitting there.

"Out," Clayton said, grasping Flagg by the upper arm. “You will shut your fool mouth and sit in the car before I bust your ass to private! And that, as I said, is an order!” Clayton’s face was nearly as red as Flagg’s now.

Flagg opened his mouth as if to speak again, but snapped it shut and slammed his way out of the house. Clayton turned back to Peg. “I need you to give me your word that you will not discuss any of what you just heard with anyone.”

Peg turned both barrels of immovable charm on the General. “How about you tell me what’s going on in my husband’s unit, first.”

“I can’t do that, ma’am."

“Then I’m not sure I can keep from talking about Commander—what was it, Spock?”

Clayton’s demeanor shifted abruptly from commanding and slightly condescending to genuinely grave. “Mrs. Hunnicutt, it is of extreme importance that those names not become common knowledge. For the safety of those men and the security of the entire planet. Do you understand?”

“Sure seems Colonel Flagg doesn’t.”

“Colonel Flagg will be reassigned to a secure facility at the close of this interview.”

For the safety of those men, she repeated to herself. Which presumably meant the safety of her husband as well, assuming they were in Uijeongbu. But she wanted information and her silence was a bargaining chip she wasn’t willing to give away. “I have questions,” she said.

Clayton regarded her for a long moment. “I can’t promise you answers, but I’ll do what I can. What do you want to know?”

“Is my husband, BJ Hunnicutt, is he safe?”

“As safe as he can be, given his location. We’re providing as much support as we can to the 4077th. It’s vital to the war effort.”

At least she knew he was alive. “Could you arrange for me to talk to him?”

“I believe that can be arranged. Did Corporal O’Reilly mention any specific threat to San Francisco?” His voice had changed from the moment Flagg was gone, growing both more considered and more urgent.

“I don’t—know.” She sat back a little on the cot. So they’d come to the same conclusion that she had, even if she’d left it mostly unspoken. Unless they wanted to know how much more classified information O’Reilly had given her. “Russians?’

“So he didn’t tell you.”

“No.” Tell her what? Did they know more or were they fishing?

Clayton peered out the window at Flagg, who was pacing beside their vehicle, harassed by a small crowd of fowl. “I expect you to contact me immediately if you hear from any of the men I mentioned to you, or from anyone else at the 4077th. Here’s my card.” He passed her a business card, which she tucked automatically into a pocket. “I’m going to get in touch with a few people, see what I can do about getting you a chance to talk to your husband.” They preceded her out of the room. She walked them to the door. Clayton turned around one last time as they left. “And ma’am,”

“Yes?” she said.

“If I were you I’d stay right here.”

The words might have been threatening, would have been if they’d come from Flagg, but from Clayton they sounded thoughtful, almost protective. He walked back through the yard, pointed Colonel Flagg into the passenger seat, and drove away. Clayton’s tone, if anything, worried her more than a mere threat. He hadn’t meant stay here so she could be found and questioned again. He’d meant _Don’t go back to San Francisco_.

Edna found her on the couch in the living room. She had Erin tucked into her arms. Edna was going to spoil that baby. “You going to finish your supper?”

“I don’t feel like eating anymore,” Peg said, then wished she could recall her words. She didn’t want to suggest she didn’t like Edna’s cooking, and she didn’t want to seem casual about wasting food. “Sorry,” she said, belatedly.

Edna sat next to her. “Those two would put me off my supper, too. Never you mind. You’ll see the leftovers in hot dish tomorrow.”

“And I’ll be glad to have them.”

She left Edna with Erin for a while and returned to the guest room to unpack her things, since it appeared they were going to be here for a while and she wanted to be able to make herself useful by morning. It had been a while since she’d done farm chores, but she was sure it would come back to her. She filled the empty dresser and wardrobe with Erin’s and her own clothes. The box of letters was missing She knew they had been there in the morning. She had double checked, after the mess with having a thief in her room.

She dropped back onto the cot, knuckles pressed to her teeth. How could they? Her breath sounded harsh in her ears. Running steps interrupted her while she was still in shock. “What happened?” Edna said. Had Peg cried out without even knowing? 

“They took BJ’s letters.” How? They were never alone in the room. Had they stolen inside while she was eating dinner?

“Oh no! Ed, those agents took BJ’s letters,” Edna shouted into the kitchen.

“No they didn’t,” Ed replied blandly, barely audible from the kitchen. There was the sound of a chair scraping back against the floor, slow, heavy footsteps, and then Ed made his way into the room, the box of letters in his hands. “I thought they might, so I took them first.”

“How did you know they were there?”

Ed shrugged. “Just did.” He handed her the box.

Edna returned to her knitting, Ed to watching their grainy, black and white TV. Peg read each of BJ’s letters again, as though she could conjure him to her side through his words alone. Erin took a bottle and spent a while rolling around on a blanket in the living room while Edna watched, entranced. It was getting late. She ought to get Erin to sleep and go to bed herself.

The phone rang.

Edna tucked her knitting into her bag and crossed the room to answer. “Who is it?” A pause. “Oh, yes, I see! I’ll get her.” Edna took a step to the side, one hand covering the receiver. “Peg, it’s for you.” There was a delighted lilt to her voice.

Peg set down the letter she’d been rereading and leapt for the phone. Edna handed it off. Peg put it to her ear, hesitant. “Who is it?” She didn’t want to be disappointed, but she hoped, she _hoped_ …

 _“Peggy?”_ The voice was tinny with distance and static, but it was unmistakable. 

Peg sobbed into the receiver, scrubbed tears out of her eyes, and squeaked, “Oh, BJ! Is it really you? I’ve missed you so much!” What felt like four months’ worth of loneliness welled behind her eyelids, and she pressed one heel against the tears slowly winding their way down her cheeks in one continuous sob. Hearing BJ's voice was like the stars aligning, like the sun was back in its place, like everything would be finally be alright.

“Peggy?” he said.

She sniffled. “It’s been a long week.” There was a pause long enough that Peg wondered what was happening on the other end, if there was something more than miles keeping BJ from talking--and then there was a long, drawn-out sigh, shot with static. Peg recognized that sigh: BJ, with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

"Tell me about it."

"As if you were here with me," Peg vowed, and smiled through her tears.


End file.
